


Fight or Flight

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: (except for the actually happening part), M/M, Rough Sex, Secret Santa, Shame and Angst, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secret Santa prompt: Dorn/Curze. Wouldn’t it be nice if fear of someone decreased the lust felt towards him, instead of increasing it? Whether something actually happens or Dorn just imagines it, and the explicitness of the fic up to the writer. Bonus points for it being real, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight or Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I hope this is something like what you were hoping for and you have a great holidays!

_Nails dug into his skin as surprisingly thin arms pressed him down. Dorn bucked against it, trying to throw him off... but not as hard as he could have, not regretting his failure, rutting as much as wrestling. Curze purred and used his knees to spread Dorn’s legs wider, penetrating him with one stabbing thrust. Dorn screamed in pain and pleasure as he was split open and he loved it..._

Waking up mortified and sticky was not how Rogal Dorn liked to begin the day. Sigismund fretted when he spent the morning in the pain-glove.

The trouble was his newest brother. The shame of having wet-dreams about his brothers wasn’t new, but it was at least understandable and to some degree normal to be fantasising about Fulgrim’s perfect features or Sanguinius’ angelic beauty or Horus’ boundless charisma according to the gossip he strongly discouraged. No one had anything good to say about Konrad Curze. Even Fulgrim had stumbled over their introductions.

Curze was a primarch, yes, but as much a shell of one as the thing itself in Dorn’s mind. He lacked valour or majesty, subsisted on only petty malice and casual cruelty. There was nothing about him Dorn liked or admired.

Then there were the dreams. Sharp teeth ripping bloody chunks of meat and tendon from his neck. The spikes of the branks cutting into his tongue as he tried to scream with the red-hot brand pressing into his thigh. Arching against adamantium chains while blood ran down his back. He knew intellectually, while he was awake, why he had discouraged flogging in his Legion since the development of the pain-glove, because causing the minimum physical damage was only logical. Efficient, sensible. A punishment to mortify the flesh, not to be longed for.

Curze’s dark eyes, reflective as a cat’s, set deep in pale skin behind lank and greasy hair, looking down at him as he made Dorn scream, and made him strain for more.

But none of that was real. His brother never need know of his twisted longings, the dirty things he tried not to think of during the day, or that Dorn associated him with that filth.

Thus far in their acquaintance, Curze had been rude and mocking, but generally quiet and withdrawn. Dorn could pretend to not be aware of him all the time, could strive to communicate only by way of Fulgrim, if he need communicate at all. Fulgrim was supposed to be his mentor, after all, and possessed much more presence, even if Dorn would usually scorn his hedonism and excesses. Curze showed no great deal of interest towards him, so that made it easier.

Like now, Curze was folded up upon himself as Dorn read through deployment details on his dataslate. Fulgrim had been trying to persuade him to bathe, but he saw only limited success. He wondered idly what his hair would feel like clenched in his hands, tangles and mattes of dried blood and greasy tar from the air, or maybe that sheen was natural.

He could not say what changed. It was more immaterial than the shift of the wind from east to west, than a cloud passing over the pale winter sun.

Curze was smiling at him like someone with a joke no one else would understand. The smirk showed filed teeth and made his skin stretch tightly over the protruding bones of his skull.

‘Curze?’

He laughed darkly. ‘No, that’s not my name. I am the Night Haunter.’

‘Our father has said otherwise and his word is law. You are a primarch now, brother, not a primitive legend.’

‘So sure, so proud,’ Curze said, half hiss and half chuckle. ‘I could find you amusing if you weren’t so despicable.’

Dorn might be even more aware of his own failings than any other, but he tried hard to be what a primarch was supposed to be. Diligent, honest, selfless, valiant, obedient. A creature such as this had no cause to find fault with him.

Curze’s movements were completely different than before. Not fluid, no, jerky and puppet-like, but each little burst of action too fast to follow and then he was somewhere else, like watching a moving picture with too slow a frame-rate.

Dorn was almost tempted to believe this was something--someone--different than the Konrad Curze he had met, some other creature wearing his skin. That was silly, of course. There was no such thing as daemonic possession or doppelgangers or other myths of the dark ages.

Curze got too close too fast and Dorn saw only then that that had been a casual saunter for him, because he struck like a viper.

Dorn had the sensation of falling completely unexpectedly and out of his control. Curze had nothing like the weight he should have needed to take him down, but his body was telling him that they were moving at an angle that simply should not have been possible as his biology tried to compensate.

He hit the ground hard on his back, managing to knee Curze a couple times but having clearly come off worse from the fall. Curze loomed over him, pinning him down with pressure in directions his joints were not supposed to go.

Dorn’s hearts pounded in his chest. Under the rage and aggression was pure animal terror to escape, to be able to defend himself. Fight or flight. Combat hormones raced through his body, making every muscle in his body tense and shake as he tried to throw him off. He could barely think, let along strategise. Some deep part of him recognised the danger of this madness, like a cur foaming at the mouth from rabies.

To his complete surprise instead of going for the throat, Curze shifted his hips and ground against him.

‘Hm, you’re less twisted than I’d thought.’

Despite everything, Dorn felt a moment of profound gratitude. He had thought as much himself and there was a deep comfort in knowing that when tested he wasn’t as sick as his fantasies had suggested.

The burning need to get Curze away from him, so strong as to overpower any other desire, had not faded, and he took the opportunity to bring his weight into play and throw Curze off him, followed by a solid punch to the jaw to drive him back.

‘Too bad. I thought you’d like it that way.’

‘That wasn’t a joke,’ he said rather than answering directly. He was entirely focused on Curze and the danger he represented, concentration focusing every glance, every breath, every tense muscle.

‘No, you’re right. I wasn’t really going to stop once I got going.’ 

Dorn could almost guess what that meant, but he didn’t want to pursue that train of thought. ‘This is no acceptable behaviour from a primarch.’

‘Tch. I’m more honest than you when it comes to what primarchs are, what primarchs do. It’s too bad: we have quite a future together and it would have been easier for you if you liked it. Well, easier in some ways, and your shame mixed with blood would be so pretty.’

‘I’d duel with you for this, but you’re too much a coward for that. You can only attack the unsuspecting and the weak. I am--’

‘Brothers!’ Fulgrim called. ‘Are you finally getting to know one another?’

‘Yes,’ Dorn said, hand still on his sword.

‘Always so grumpy, Rogal. Was he bothering you, Konrad?’

‘Brother Dorn is very set in his ways, it seems.’ Curze had shifted his body language back to how he had been before, but he spared Dorn a shark-like grin Fulgrim couldn’t see.

‘Do try to play nice with others, Rogal.’ Fulgrim chastised him. Dorn could have defended himself, but that would mean admitting to anything that had happened, however entirely in the right he might have been.

After that his dreams were only of fire. Some part of him thought he should be relieved, but he couldn’t bring himself to be.


End file.
